This reporter attended his first bitcoin meetup in sunny Scotland on Thursday. It took place in the Bayes Centre – Edinburgh University’s snazzy artificial intelligence and data science hub. It also happens to be the spot where IOHK, the creators of the Cardano cryptocurrency, helped establish a Blockchain Technology Laboratory. The topic of the meetup,
Month: January 2020
Richard Rosenblum is co-founder and co-head of trading at crypto liquidity provider GSR. The opinions below are the author’s and do not reflect the position of CoinDesk. Like futures, the launch of bitcoin options on major exchanges has been met with anticipation. Hopeful observers believe the CME’s and Bakkt’s entry into the burgeoning options market
Elon Musk Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images Tesla CEO Elon Musk doesn’t have a lot of love for Wall Street – a fact he often mentions, including on Wednesday night’s earnings conference call. To begin with, Musk’s company hosts an nontraditional quarterly call with shareholders: After making a short statement about Tesla’s results,
One year after filing for bankruptcy, PG&E has worked out deals to borrow money and guarantee more than $25 billion in payouts to wildfire victims, insurers and local municipalities. It’s even come to terms with bondholders. As a result, its shares have skyrocketed 37 percent so far in January. Mizuho upgraded the stock this week
A sign advertising home mortgage services at a Bank of America branch in Manhattan Beach, Calif. Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images Millions more borrowers can now save big on a mortgage finance as rates have hit the lowest level in more than three years. The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage
Bakkt, the highly touted cryptocurrency exchange founded by the Intercontinental Exchange, saw zero Bitcoin options traded last week as it continues its hugely underwhelming start to life. The Bitcoin futures exchange, governed by the company behind the New York Stock Exchange, was billed as a gateway for institutional investors to get in on the world
Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act on Thursday. Griffith was arrested in November on allegations he spoke at a cryptocurrency conference in North Korea last year, where he allegedly taught his audience how to use cryptos to evade sanctions. A complaint
Nomura Research Institute (NRI) will launch a benchmark rank and compare Japanese cryptocurrency assets on Friday. The Tokyo-based management consultancy and research firm said the “NRI/IU Crypto-Asset Index Family” – created in coordination with Intelligence Unit LLC (IU) – will be available through NRI’s financial information database, IDS, to domestic and overseas institutional investors, financial
Michael Corbat, CEO, Citigroup, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2020. Adam Galica | CNBC Citigroup is making a push for investors’ dollars with a new digital robo-advisor that’s free for customers with at least $50,000 in deposits or investments at the bank. That’s the threshold needed to qualify for
Economic growth in the final quarter of the year is expected to be on par with the third quarter’s 2.1%, but it is also likely to herald the start of a slower trend that could continue through the first half of this year. Fourth quarter growth is expected to have been 2.1%, according to Dow
The Federal Reserve‘s decision Wednesday to keep interest rates steady came as a relief to many. For good reason. Although the federal funds rate, which is what banks charge one another for short-term borrowing, is not the rate that consumers pay, the Fed’s moves still affect the borrowing and saving rates they see every day.
British telecom giant Vodafone is the latest firm to pull out of the Libra Association, the non-profit body overseeing the Facebook-led digital coin, bringing the total number of early backers to withdraw from the project to eight. Vodafone Walks Away Both Vodafone and Libra confirmed the news last week with the departure appearing to be
Coinbase has hired a former vice president of product at Google to be its chief product officer. Surojit Chatterjee spent 11 years at Google, where he worked on payments, adtech and commerce. He most recently led the continuing development of Google Shopping, a service available in more than 90 countries. Prior to that, he was
Google recently suspended and removed bitcoin rewards game “Bitcoin Blast” from its Google Play app store for allegedly deceiving users, but it will not explain to the developers what exactly was deceptive about the game. On Jan. 20, Google pulled Bling’s “Bitcoin Blast,” a match-three puzzle game that rewards users with bitcoin-redeemable loyalty points. The
Back in 2019, Bitcoin had been in the middle of a massive rally at the beginning of the year, and it seems that there might a repeat this year. In a new development that should come as a major boost to BTC investors, the cryptocurrency surged past $9,000 a token. It is believed that the
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. chairman and chief executive officer, tosses a newspaper as he tours the exhibition floor during the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is leaving the newspaper business and selling its operations to publisher Lee Enterprises for
Harley-Davidson motorcycles are offered for sale at a Harley-Davidson dealership. Getty Images Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. 3M — Shares of 3M fell 5.7% after the conglomerate missed Wall Street expectations on the top and bottom lines for its fourth-quarter results. 3M reported $1.95 in adjusted earnings per share and $8.111
Mortgage rates fell to their lowest level since November, and that sent current borrowers and potential homebuyers rushing to their lenders. Overall mortgage application volume jumped 7.2% last week from the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. The week’s results include an adjustment for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
ICON (#ICONProject), the South Korean blockchain startup, is one of the few blockchain companies that has risen from the ashes of the crypto bubble of 2018. It has demonstrated a strong commitment to leading the charge towards realizing a blockchain-powered future. ICON has a solid plan, through which it plans to become a central pillar
We’re over $9,000! That means a lot of good things, of course. But any price increase brings with it increased scrutiny and, yes, increased FUD. The question for this time around is whether the “fear, uncertainty and doubt” is the same old same old or something new. In this episode, @nlw looks at three emergent
A former senior official with the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) believes the nation should join a global conversation about regulating stablecoins, with a particular focus on the Libra stablecoin. Min Zhu, former deputy governor at the PBoC, said China should join other nations in regulating the Facebook-led Libra stablecoin, according to a report by
A battery start-up that’s backed by iPod inventor and Nest founder Tony Fadell, and which claims to have found a green and scalable way to make lithium-ion batteries more efficient, on Tuesday announced that it raised $18.5 million in its Series A funding round. New Orleans-based Advano is focused on increasing batteries’ energy density by
On the surface, the growth story for exchange traded funds continues: The U.S. ETF business ended 2019 with $4.4 trillion in assets under management, a 30% increase from 2018, according to etf.com. The number of ETFs also increased 8%, to 2,302. Thanks to the continuing growth of two hot trends — environmental, social and governance,
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on January 21, 2020 in New York City. Spencer Platt | Getty Images The easy policies of the Federal Reserve and other central banks are already providing a backstop that could lessen the impact of the coronavirus on financial markets. Some analysts say
Prospective homebuyers view a bedroom while touring a house for sale in Helotes, Texas. Matthew Busch | Bloomberg | Getty Images As fears over the coronavirus roil global financial markets, investors are rushing to the relative safety of bonds. As a result, mortgage rates are falling. The 30-year fixed mortgage loosely follows the yield on
Tether has launched a new stablecoin backed by physical gold reserves called Tether Gold (XAU₮), according to a press release published on January 23. One coin will be equal to one troy fine ounce of physical gold, currently worth approximately US$1,550. Tether Gold is available as a TRC20 token on the TRON blockchain as well
Transfer agent Vertalo wants its customers to issue securities on the Tezos blockchain. The company has made Tezos its default blockchain, encouraging customers to switch over from ethereum. It has developed the ability to convert ERC-20 tokens to Tezos-formatted smart contracts, though it will still support ethereum. “We think that that covers 99 percent of
Financial stability was a key factor in the Bank of England’s decision to hold stablecoin payment systems to the same regulatory standards as existing payment chains. That’s because stablecoins may seek to operate outside of the existing financial infrastructure – the one that card payments, online banking services and others inhabit. Those activities are regulated
A father and daughter play with a digital tablet at an Estée Lauder store in Shanghai. SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images The Chinese coronavirus is forcing Wall Street to turn sour on certain stocks. Bank of America downgraded shares of Wynn Resorts to neutral from buy and Oppenheimer downgraded shares of cosmetic company
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., January 10, 2020. Brendan McDermid | Reuters The Inside ETF conference is underway in Hollywood, Florida. 2,000 investment professionals have gathered to talk what’s hot, and what’s not, in investing in 2020. At a dinner last night with ETF
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